Could this be Covidiot of the Day?
Thomas Seager is an Associate Professor at Arizona State University who teaches an engineering business practice class on the Tempe campus. This week he got in trouble for working against ASU’s attempts to halt the spread of Covid-19.
That picture at the top of the screen was taken by a student and shows the class all sitting in the first two rows. This is is a refusal to observe social distancing.
Thomas Seager, an associate professor of engineering business practices, initially asked roughly 15 students in a section of CEE to fill in the classroom’s front seats. When students moved but remained socially distant, Seager told them they had not followed his directions and asked them again to move to the front, students said.
The students added he also told them if they were concerned about the pandemic and sitting together in class, they should have attended through Zoom.
Ah, the old “they knew what they were getting into” argument.
This is not surprising, because Seager is a Covid Denier.
“His Twitter wouldn’t be an issue if he still obeyed ASU policy, common sense, and the concerns of students, however he does not seem to care about these things, and chose to put his students’ health in danger,” one student who attended the class on Zoom said in an email, who was granted anonymity for fear their standing in class would be affected.
Ironically, he’s wearing a face covering in the class. (Or maybe he’s just looking out for number one.)
He got a talking-to, but that wasn’t the end of the story.
In an email to the class Wednesday obtained by The State Press [ASU’s undergraduate online magazine/newspaper], Seager said his directions were not intended to “violate ASU health protocols.”
In an emailed statement, Seager said the class at “no time” violated ASU’s health protocols. He added his instructions to students were “consistent with ASU health protocols by maintaining at least one empty seat between each student, wearing face masks, and keeping total occupancy well below 50% of rated lecture hall capacity.”
Let’s take another look at that an earlier paragraph.
Thomas Seager, an associate professor of engineering business practices, initially asked roughly 15 students in a section of CEE to fill in the classroom’s front seats.
Okay, that’s the situation in the picture at the top of the page. There’s still an empty seat between each student. But remember this wasn’t good enough for Seager:
When students moved but remained socially distant, Seager told them they had not followed his directions and asked them again to move to the front, students said.
The first time probably wasn’t a violation, but the second one was. Then Seager shows some real nerve:
Paquet said in a follow-up that the University’s protocol is still six feet of distance between students and that “no student should be forced to sit anywhere where they may be uncomfortable.”
So, when you told students to move to the front of the room, they weren’t “forced to sit where they could be uncomfortable”?